The Literary Structures of Ancient Jewish Literature
AHRC Workshop at the University of Manchester
11-12 July 2011
Lecturers, post-docs and research students from around the world attended a workshop on "The Literary Structure of Ancient Jewish Literature" at Manchester University from July 11-12, 2011.
The workshop offered an opportunity to discuss how methods of literary analysis can be applied to the texts of ancient Judaism, asking: How does one determine the overall voice of the text? What can one say about that voice's "perspective"? What does it mean if a text does not acknowledge its own "existence" at all, and what role do secondary titles play? What status should be assigned to manifest internal differences ("sources") in the context of a literary analysis of the whole? Does "synchronic" analysis mean one has to justify the text's unity? What conceptual tools are available for understanding the difference between narrative and discourse, or the fusion of the two, in ancient Jewish literature? What role do small recurrent literary forms play in discourse and in narrative? How is explicit commentary on Bible different from implicit commentary? These and similar questions were discussed with reference to real examples from the ancient Jewish sources. Participants were invited to make suggestions, before and during the workshop, on what texts or literary puzzles they would like to see discussed in more detail.
The context of the workshop is an AHRC Project on the literary structures of the anonymous and pseudepigraphic literature of Jewish antiquity. This includes the "Old Testament" Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic literature. However, the discussion made forays into biblical texts (both OT and NT) and "authored" texts, such as Philo and Josephus. The Project has a strong comparative dimension.
The workshop began with an introduction to two new tools: first, the Project's "Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features"; and second, the "Database of Literary Profiles of Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Texts". Participants had pre-publication access to the Database for the duration of the event, and were able to apply these tools to specific texts and to raise problems of literary structures relevant to their own research.
Alex Samely led the workshop, supported by other members of the Project team - Philip Alexander, Rocco Bernasconi, Hedva Abel and Aron Sterk.
Further information
- Workshop Timetable of Sessions (PDF Document, 14 KB)